


Promise Me Bold

by rivendells



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-10 03:47:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6938419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivendells/pseuds/rivendells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary who used her demureness as a shield, hiding her ferocity beneath lace-lined gowns and maternal poise.  Anna had taken her to be a docile creature upon their first meeting, and how very wrong she was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Promise Me Bold

**Author's Note:**

> ...So, that 3.04, huh? I'm 100% certain everything would have turned out much better for all involved had these two worked together, honestly. This ignores the canon of that episode and 3.03, and is set during 3.02 right after Abe and Thomas leave Whitehall.
> 
> Title from Laura Marling's [Rest in the Bed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkbRhC9bSng).

The door shut with a finality that seemed to shake through the whole of Whitehall. Distantly, Thomas' cries faded into obscurity. In Abraham's wake, every one of them was left unmoored — and Mary most of all, as was clear by the way she'd sunk to the floor, little though the Magistrate seemed to care.

"You've made your bed," Richard all but spat. Mary's bent form seized up in another choked breath as his words echoed through the stark hall, and he did not relent. "And now you get to lie in it."

Anna could take this no longer. She'd never acquired the skill of remaining silent while injustice was imparted upon the undeserving, a habit her mother had once despaired over and precisely what now Mary needed more than ever. She possessed a history simmering with reasoning to fume for every act this man committed, but his hatred towards the woman who had done everything to fight to protect the son he'd spurned shattered whatever thin veneer of civility she had been attempting. One step drew her closer to the elder Woodhull's side, shoulders squared and chin tipped high, a snarl nothing less than feral coming to lift her lip. Richard did not flinch, but he bristled: and that was enough.

"Leave," Anna hissed out, " _her be_." 

A silence overtook them, surely full of every vicious word she and Richard wished to speak to one another, the threat of violence hanging like an awaiting noose in the air. Behind her, Mary's intakes grew more labored, and beside her, Edmund laid a cautious hand on her shoulder, a gesture she could not bring herself to brush off. The touch itself seemed to bring her back to the present — drawing her from the past which held a thousand memories of the Magistrate's beady eye pinning her family with needless disgust.

"Our emotions are all overwrought," the Major said, a tremble belying the forced command in his tone. It took every bit of Anna's strength not to rip the gun from his grip and point it towards one far more deserving, her fist soon clenching at her side to stay that hand. "We must all stomach a great betrayal—"

"Yes," Anna interrupted, unthinking in her wrath. "Yes, we certainly must."

It was not Abe's defection she was speaking of, and all in the room should have known it. Edmund's hand tightened where it grasped, a plea for her to speak no more. Whether or not he wished to protect her or stave off the truth she felt dangerously close to admitting — _you would have to hang me too_ — it served to remind her that going against Richard Woodhull was akin to going against the King himself. She would arrive nowhere even with the most sincerest of declarations and soundest of pleas.

And so she surrendered if only for the time being, bowing her head and turning from Richard's looming figure, easing herself gently from Edmund's hold. She crouched down before Mary, sliding a hand against her shoulder and under her arm, a steady gesture remarkable for the anger that shook through her still. She schooled her tone to comfort: she bid her body to stifle every ounce of fury that wished to lash out down on deep. Anna had been pretending for years — to do so a little longer would be no hardship.

"Come, Mary," Anna coaxed, "allow me to assist you."

The Magistrate huffed out a noise of disgust, and Anna did not watch as he turned on his heel and swept from room. She thought Edmund might follow, afraid that this shared revelation might have served to push them closer than ever, but he too stooped down, the tired lines on his face smoothing back the outburst that had preceded it. He set the gun on the cabinet nearest, and spread his empty palm in peace. For whatever involvement Mary had all but professed in her offer of hostage, he, in this moment, visibly did not blame her for it. In a queer way, with faith surely desperate and deluded, it gave Anna a small sliver of hope.

She met his eye and as one, they helped Mary to rise. Though her knees gave as soon as she was upright, their shared strength between them was enough to keep her on her feet. Up the stairs and down the hall they went until Mary at last had a chair beneath her, but Anna worried for how her hand hovered over her bodice, skin a clammy sheen in the low light of the afternoon. She had plans to make (they _both_ did, that she knew), and yet all would wait until Mary was relieved of her shock.

"I — I — apologies, Mrs. Woodhull, for whatever pain that your husb — that _I_ myself may have caused."

Edmund was stuttering again, and he had removed himself to the doorway when Mary's silence met him in return. Anna began to move towards the Major, but a chilled hand was suddenly in hers holding her by the bed, latching on with a surprising amount of force — an adequate descriptor for Mary Woodhull herself. _Don't you leave_ , was the wordless command, and Anna heeded that call, lowering to sit beside her.

"Edmund." Anna saw the way his taut frame relaxed when she spoke his name. She saw evidence of the power she held over this man by a single word, and it half made her want to weep. "If you could have a basin and warmed water brought — I believe that would do a great deal in making amends."

It wouldn't, but it was a lie she needed to tell — and one he needed to hear, judging from the weak smile shadowing his face. It did not reach his eyes, but the attempt she valued. An incline of his head saw him out the door, and she and Mary both waited with bated breath as they listened for his footsteps to disappear down the stairwell. The hall had not gone quiet for a second when:

"We are ruined," Mary choked out, and suddenly her eyes were red-rimmed, flushed cheeks slick with tears, the pretense she'd held up dissolving at once. "Every single one of us, Anna, I — Thomas—"

She was not speaking of her good name this time, and Anna knew that. Life and love were at stake: a child hung in the balance. While Mary's passionate defense of Abraham could be seen as a wife's undying devotion to her husband, the Major would look back on the past months in light of what he'd learned and see she had been no unwilling conspirator. And if he did not connect the truths together, then Richard with his desperation to covet his grandson would doubtless be all too eager to tell him so.

"No." Anna said quietly, bringing her other hand to cover theirs that were clasped to the point of pain. She forgot, at times, just how young Mary _was_ what with the motherly mask she kept up with unshakable grace, but her youth was now etched over every inch of her crumpled face. "No, none of us are, not yet. And perhaps not ever if we can put our minds in it. Abe is alive, and so is your Thomas. Think on that, and _breathe_. That is what they need from you. That is what _I_ need from you."

Mary was struggling with every intake, her chest heaving too quickly in a reaction Anna herself had seen before, long ago when Abraham had lost his mother. Two decades ago that was, and yet she could recall with painful clarity the way she'd found him panting in the woods for breath that wouldn't come, his skin cold to the touch despite the sweat that streaked it. It had not been grief, not yet with the loss too near, but panic: fear as if he could not conceive of a way forward without the woman she'd known had been a light in his life. Ben and Caleb had not known what to do for him: none of them had. He had lost a cornerstone at an age younger than any should — and if it could be done, she would not allow Thomas to be left fatherless.

"It feels impossible—" stuttered out Mary just barely, "my heart, it—"

"Will remain right where it is." Anna slid her hand out from under Mary's and lightly touched where that organ lay, her fingertips settling against the fine fabric of her dress. She could feel it beneath that layer, pumping away frightfully in a rhythm far surpassing the measure of a breath. The caress did not go unnoticed. Mary's eyes sharpened and narrowed in on her, quite suddenly no longer so unfocused. She all but gaped, and Anna did not look away. If an anchor was what she needed in this moment, an anchor she would be.

They sat so, exchanging nothing else but the simple contact Anna had given as the cadence of each inhale calmed, smoothing out gradually. The sunlight cast over the floor had retreated back inches by the time the thud of Hewlett's boots neared again, the spell between them coming to a close. Only then did Anna withdraw her hand while keeping the other clasped within Mary's, the two of them no doubt appearing a vision of sisterhood and support. The door creaked, and Edmund looked to her alone, averting his attention from Mary once more. He was afraid, Anna thought, of causing Mary any further distress, and rightly so. The memory of the weapon brandished so near to the child would be one to easily fade, not for any of them.

"The fire is lit and a bath is drawn up in the east room, Mrs. Strong, should Mrs. Woodhull require it." He lingered there half a moment, and Anna was well acquainted enough with his character by now to read that dallying as a beckoning. Slowly, she threaded her fingers out from Mary's, assured that the woman was past the worst of her fit of fear. Mary did not protest as she rose and made her way to the room's threshold, allowing for Edmund to step back so they might go at least half-unheard.

"I must apologize, too, to you, Anna," he began without prelude, his hands fidgeting before him. "I cannot imagine the shock it must have been for you — to know that we have been housing a traitor. I thought not at all logically, but with my wounded heart and pride. It was barbaric of me to endanger an innocent _child_."

Anna reached for him, stilling those nervous hands. Again — always, it seemed — she did not know if she acted from sincerity or a deeper, darker pull: an urge that had her too tempted to use what they had here to guide ends to her own means. Both, it seemed. Terribly enough, it was both.

"You told me, once — you said this new age is a struggle between men of reason and men of blood." The memory of that night had slid under her skin, itching at her when her bed grew too cold and empty. She thought of the starlight so vast she could not comprehend it, and of the glint in the Major's eye which had then seemed to be a mirror of the constellations themselves. She'd had few recollections in recent years that served as a comfort, but that was one of them. And yet she would utilize it, if need be, to remind the man before her who he was at his core. "I believe the coming days will be a test of that. Do not lose sight of who you are, Edmund. I pray I will not."

It was subtle enough, and God knew she meant it. The corners of the Major's mouth lifted but briefly, and his thumb caressed the back of her palm once before he released her. If he suspected her part in all of this, he let on no sign, and it was a relief even if the looming inevitability seemed to threaten to destroy all on the horizon. One moment taken at a time, one day. It was all she could do.

Edmund stepped back as if to depart, that invisible burden on his shoulders seeming to weigh heavier than ever before. He paused in his step, his back to her still, and only then did she hear the crack in his voice.

"Mrs. Woodhull put herself between Abraham and I, with no thought to her own life. I admire her bravery, Anna." And then so quiet, she could scarcely believe it was said at all: "As I do yours."

He disappeared shortly after into the room he had requisitioned as his office, and Anna wished she could make herself believe that there was knowledge implied in that statement — she wished she could tell herself that he already knew, that she was already forgiven, but she'd long since learned not to take stock in fairy-tales. In the end, the Greek tragedies Edmund was so fond of would likely be the truer reflection.

-

The room was, as the Major had said, hearth-lit and prepared with a steaming basin brought in from the kitchen. Anna began to undress Mary piece by piece once they were sealed away in privacy, the woman uncharacteristically compliant. She'd half-expected to be shooed away in the interest of modesty, but Mary did not flinch as her dress was withdrawn, standing without protest as Anna continued onto unlace her stays, revealing one inch of pale skin after another. She was very pretty, came the thought more than once. Disrobed, it became clear that Mary held herself taller than she truly was, little though Anna meant to ogle. And yet, uncomfortably, it was becoming difficult _not_ to. Whether it was curiosity for never having seen another woman unclothed or some foul desire to compare herself with Abraham's lawful wife, she did not find it easy to look away.

"In you get, then," Anna chided once her shift had been discarded, pushing up her own sleeves and taking a rag in hand. Mary bent cautiously, the movements of one exhausted beyond her years, and slid herself into the basin, knees drawn up to her chest. Anna came to crouch, using a pitcher of water warmed by the fire to spill over Mary's bare shoulders, washing away the nervous sweat that she'd felt dampening each garment removed. She shook, still, but the trembling was ebbing by the moment, her legs sliding out by the slightest with a fraction of more ease. If she was bothered by the strange intimacy in their positioning, she did not show it. Mary who used her demureness as a shield, hiding her ferocity beneath lace-lined gowns and maternal poise. Anna had taken her to be a docile creature upon their first meeting, and how very wrong she was.

"Do you—," Mary began, a touch hoarse. Her eyes had shut, and her head tipped back as far for her pinned hair to tickle Anna's arm. "Do you think I will see them again?"

For as flatly as the weary words had been delivered, there was a great deal of vulnerability within them, the level of which she had never been privy to see before. Anna leaned back on her heels, wringing out the cloth of its cooled water to soak it again in the heat. "There is not a doubt in my mind," Anna said, casting her gaze to the flames rather than to the firelit skin so near. It was now _her_ heart beating too quickly; her breath growing short, and she did not understand it. "You are a clever woman, Mary. At times frighteningly so, and I know Abe to be a man of uncanny determination. Thomas will again be in your arms, and soon. I know it." 

Those few words were the only Mary spoke throughout the course of the cleansing, and Anna continued on her work diligently. She used the warmed water until it had all gone chilled, finding nothing else to dry her with aside from an old quilt tucked away in a sea chest. She unfolded the blanket with care, noting Rebecca's attentive hand in the stitching, any remnant of her one Anna took to be sacred. It was a worthy woman this aged fabric would be warming — that much she could admit for the lengths Mary had gone for the man half of her still loved.

Mary rose, the water dripping from every subtle curve she had, running in rivulets down her small breasts and to a stomach lined with little white marks where the child had once swelled. Anna, holding the quilt out with palms that inexplicably perspired, tried to beat away the image of Abraham's hands skimming against those scars. She tried to shut her wandering mind against the thought of his mouth pressing to her hipbone and then retreating lower, but it was not jealousy making her stomach tumble and flutter. It was something more desirous and foolish than that: the urge to see her own fingers trailing along that same skin, if only to see how it would feel. If only to see how the rest of her would feel, too, as the idea of touching that smoothness brought about an ache any sensible God-fearing creature on this earth would name as sin.

And yet it did not strike her as a sin, not as Mary stepped forward to be folded within the blanket, the outline her frame willowy beneath Anna's hands at her shoulders. Their proximity made her fingertips prickle, and disgust roiled within her for what were surely the wrong reasons. Was she so lost within her own isolation to want at the nearness of any soul?

She was lost on the answer, and wordlessly watched as Mary dried herself limb by limb. It was a moment or two before she realized she had not torn her gaze away, and another before she caught Mary staring back. Expecting a strict word of rebuke, Anna was startled when no request to be left in solitude met her ears. Instead, Mary went on unperturbed, draping the quilt by the hearth, taking no cares to disguise herself before she stepped over to the bed to pull on the nightgown Anna had spread out there. This room was where Abe and Mary slept, and the trundle bed pulled out in the corner was where Thomas laid his head. Anna did not belong here amongst these memories of matrimony; memories she herself had desecrated in times past.

"Will you stay?"

Would she _stay_. The proposition coming so soon after her thoughts was jarring, almost as if Mary herself had heard them. Evening would be coming on soon, although she could not imagine Richard would welcome either of them at his supper table this night. She herself needed to seek out Edmund. She needed to ensure that he would not yet do anything rash, and yet she too suddenly felt the exhaustion rattling through her bones, the upheaval of the day having boiled down to this. A pillow beneath her and a chance to rest her throbbing head — she was not strong enough to say no, much less to the only one in this house she did not have to lie to.

Anna slid off her shoes into her stocking feet, hitching up her skirts to climb into the bed beside Mary. She settled herself facing her, and Mary turned to do the same. A silence almost eerie had overtaken the house: she had become accustomed to the sound of Thomas running this way and that, had grown used to his piping voice at any and all hours and had even become fond of the shadows of Abraham she could see within him. But the young boy was no longer the prodigal son of Whitehall, and nor would he be again if, God willing, Abe had his way. If she herself felt the loss, Anna could not begin to imagine what gaping hole the child's absence had torn in Mary.

For a time, neither of them spoke. Mary sent her focus to some point beyond Anna's shoulder, and Anna set her eyes on the pale slope of her neck. When Mary slid her hand forward to meet hers, she twined her fingers through and held back. It was a strange companionship they had, one that should not have been allowed to exist with the bitterness they'd both harbored over the years, and yet — if Anna had any true ally in this world, if such a union _could_ be born in a world rife with treachery and treason, perhaps it would be her.

"I don't know what I would do without him." Mary's voice came softly, a tinge of bewilderment there. "I never counted on loving him, but—"

"He is an easy man to love," Anna quietly cut in, her mind calling back to heated dalliances in her father's hayloft and stolen kisses in the woods, of the then-selfless heart she'd fallen for. _Was_ an easy man to love. That flame had since flickered and faded — she'd been a different person in their younger years, and so had he. "But if the worst should — if something were to happen, you would push past it. You would live beyond it."

Mary's eyes welled, but it wasn't the wrong thing to say, nor was it removed from reality. Anna had lived beyond Abe; she had survived him. Though she'd lost him in a different way altogether, the wound at times hurt her no less than if he'd been buried in the ground with his brother. And surely he would have been today, all to the credit of —

" _Richard_." Mary bit out the name like a curse. "He knew what he was doing. He knew every consequence this would bring." Mary blinked away her tears rapidly, her despair morphing into rage. It shook through her, right down to the very bones of the fingers Anna held. "For all that I have tried to love him, I could never forgive him this. He would not let me take Thomas if were Abe to — if — you saw him today. He wants my son for himself. He wants to make him what Abraham was not, and I...and I once called him _father_. I could be trapped with him, here, at Whitehall for the rest of my days, and—"

"No." It was a word spoken with enough conviction to halt Mary in her tracks, and it was a word felt with enough of the same for Anna to say what she meant. "Should the worst occur for us both, you and I will leave. We will take Thomas, even if we must be thieves in the night about it. We will take him and go to Selah's family in Connecticut—" For he had family there, a mother who had treated her with far more kindness than she had ever deserved from one who had raised a son she'd abandoned. They had been cut from the same cloth, molded of the same Whiggish mind and stubborn heart that had doomed Anna to her present predicament. She would ask no questions, and they would have place among a matriarch who had long since survived without a living husband. "I would not leave you to Richard Woodhull. Whatever our differences, we are bound — if not by Abe, then by that we are women. The very world is against us, and we...we should not be against each other."

Anna knew Mary had few surviving kin; what folk she had still living were distant relatives in Huntington, and she was well-versed in how to sniff out loneliness in another. Judging by the searching look she received, the hue of Mary's eyes so very stormy in this light, Anna could tell she had never received a pledge of safety she believed. Abraham, with all his sincerity, had never been a good liar. Anna, in spite of every uncertainty that lay before them, meant this promise to the depths of her soul. "To Connecticut?" Mary asked faintly.

"Yes," Anna insisted, hushed. She'd too often thrust herself into plans and schemes without any fallback to serve as rescue, but this was one. This was one she prayed she would never have to employ, and yet it would serve them both if the future twisted itself into the nightmare it was shaping up to be. "If we cannot make our way out of this one, that is what we will do."

Mary took the consideration in a long pause, and slowly she began to nod, the strong hold of her jaw trembling some. A tear Anna believed she didn't even know she was shedding dropped onto the pillow, and then another. Anna reached out to wipe the next away, and Mary caught her wrist before she could pull back. Again, there was the fluttering drum of her heart. It throbbed in her ears, drowning out even the crackling of the nearby hearth, thrumming with energy unsatisfied.

"I would go with you, Anna, I would." But. There would be a but, and Anna was already keenly aware what (and who) it would be. "But first — first I will do anything and everything it takes to save my husband," Mary continued with hard determination in her voice, keeping Anna's hand at her cheek. Reflexively, Anna's fingers brushed once at the soft skin there and then again — that damnable curiosity alive and well even as Mary went onto implicate an act too terrible for even contemplation. "Anything and everything, do you understand me? No matter who may stand in my way."

Edmund. She spoke of Edmund, and Anna felt as if the water was fast closing in over her head in a flood she could not outrun. Abe had talked his way out of this one for now — but how for long would the Major be appeased to sit down and take inaction? They were at a stalemate, and Anna had lost sight of the cause. Abe had at last cultivated his contrary source in New York, and gathering Townsend's intelligence and passing it off to Washington was what was _important_. A British officer's life should pale against that, but it did not. It did not when her developing conscience could not abide by the death of an honorable man.

"I understand," Anna said even if she did not, even if her voice plainly cracked. "I understand."

There would be some middling path where neither Abe nor Hewlett would pay the price, and she would take it: she would defy every odd if she could, and still Connecticut's green shore would await were all else to fail her. There was comfort intended to be taken in that, just as it was comfort she intended to give by telling Mary the very same, and she felt a morbid inkling of it — a bleak hope that they would indeed survive this, no matter the pain and grief suffered in the process. No matter if either men were lost, they two would persevere. It was a thought she caught reflected back to her in Mary's eyes as the woman shifted closer, their knees brushing, the scrutiny she received intent in its study. There was, for once, nothing hard in the look she received but everything soft: a rarity which felt a precious gift to behold.

"Anna—" Mary faltered, seemingly lost for words, and what came next was a wonder to hear. "You stand to lose as much as Abe. Your _life_. If I can save you too, I will. I would."

The pledge rang as earnest as her own, and Anna took it, holding it close within her heart. She gave herself no illusions, and knew this all stood to crumble the instant Hewlett and Abraham again came to clash. If this war had taught her anything, it was that all she built would stand on nothing but the frailest of foundations, ready to be swept away by an errant wind or an ill tide. But for now, in this bedroom where she and Mary were closed off from the rest of the world, far from the lies and deception which sustained them both, Anna would let herself believe it.

Her fingers sought out and folded over Mary's, tracing out her soft palm not yet roughened by the labor which had weathered her own. She tucked that hand beneath her cheek and leaned upon it, shutting her eyes to the sight of the woman limned in the firelight. It was not but seconds later that she felt the ghosting of lips against her own, gentle and undemanding. The covers shifted some and Mary was leaning forward, Anna was sure of it, but she did not lift her lids. Her stomach fluttered just as it once had with Abe, and yet this, like most secrets, she imagined they would keep to themselves in the dark.

The shadows of early evening had stretched over the bed and engulfed them in it by the time Mary's soft mouth left her own, and Anna opened her eyes to find that nothing in her viewing had changed. The fire was down to its embers, but the desire low in her belly still burned. If she wanted answers, there were none she could find on Mary's face — not when she was nestling in the slightest bit closer, curling up so that Anna felt it only natural for her arms to move to hold, for her body to shift to fit in response. And fit they must have, for it was not minutes later that Anna heard Mary's breath even out in sleep, feeling every rhythmic exhale as it left her. She would remain for as long as the woman rested and beyond it, if she could. The very world, as she'd said, was against them: and Anna would not let it tear them apart.


End file.
